Jeremy Gu, San Francisco Bay Area Chapter Vice President
Speakers and ASA San Francisco Bay Area Chapter Volunteers
Chapter officers Second row (from left):
- Chris Barker Program committee member
- Jeremy Gu Chapter vice president
- Kathy Zhang Chapter president
- Ron Yu Chapter vice president
- Ruixiao Lu Council of Chapters representative
- Li Zhang Chapter president-elect
Speakers First row (from left):
- Deepak Agarwal Vice president of engineering at LinkedIn
- Anirban Biswajit Deb Data science manager at Uber
- Imola K. Fodor Deputy global head of oncology biostatistics for gRED and breast/GYN franchise of Genentech/Roche
- Annette Molinaro Professor of neurosurgery, epidemiology, and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco
- Tara Maddala Head of biostatistics and data management at GRAIL
- Brad Klingenberg Vice president of data science at Stitch Fix
- Jizhou Fu Data science manager at Uber
The San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of ASA (SFASA) invited a group of panelists to speak December 7, 2017, about career development for data scientists, statisticians, and students interested in the careers of data science, machine learning, business analytics, and biostatistics. Speakers came from diverse backgrounds and provided the audience—made up of ASA members and the public—with guidance on various perspectives.
When the discussion began, each of the speakers gave a self-introduction and described how they started their career. Annette Molinaro, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, talked about how she decided to join academia. Deepak Agarwal, vice president of engineering at LinkedIn, shared his path toward artificial intelligence and recommendation systems after earning his PhD in statistics. Imola K. Fodor, deputy global head of oncology biostatistics for gRED and breast/GYN franchise of Genentech/Roche, and Tara Maddala, head of biostatistics and data management at GRAIL, discussed their interests in statistics and research when they were studying as undergrads. Finally, Brad Klingenberg, vice president of data science at Stitch Fix; Jizhou Fu, data science manager at Uber; and Anirban Biswajit Deb, data science manager at Uber, shared their experiences working as data science managers in fast-growing startups.
The questions raised by the audience concerned preparing for job interviews, applying to graduate schools, deciding between master’s degrees and PhD degrees, and gaining the qualifications of a data scientist in current job markets. The panel members addressed the importance of statistical knowledge in boosting their careers, advised how to be successful in a data science career, and described work challenges—such as time planning and business communication with nonstatisticians.
After the discussion, the speakers and audience members had about an hour to chat one-on-one.
The panel speakers and audience members agreed statistics is the foundation of data science and people cannot work effectively in data science without statistical skills.
Since 2015, SFASA has successfully hosted panel discussions about career development and plans are in place to continue in 2018.
interesting. is there a video recording? data science and statistical sciences have so many things in common and I hope to watch the panel discussion if there is one available online
Would love to attend the next one in 2018
I’m glad that the statistics community is growing. Statistics at my university in 90s was a very small program.
I hoped to attend. Any insights on how an engineers moving to data scientists? If the meetup is free,I will go to the one next year.